Does Camus Hate the Death Penalty?

In class on Thursday our group presented an article by Robert R. Brock that claimed that Camus wrote The Stranger to be a criticism of the death penalty. Brock argued that the reason that Camus doesn’t give any background to the Arab and never brings him up in the trial is because that would have distracted from the point of the trial, which is supposedly to draw attention to the severity of the death penalty. I think that there is definitely validity in Brock’s argument that the book is criticizing the death penalty, although there are certainly many things to get from the writing in The Stranger.


The part that convinces me of this argument the most is after Meursault has been convicted to the death penalty and we see his agony everyday worrying that today will be the day that he’s executed. Meursault says he “ended up sleeping only a little bit during the day and then, all night long, waited patiently” and at the slightest noise he would panic and think that someone was coming to execute him, but then he would be so relieved to know he would live another 24 hours. We see him wish that the way he would be killed gave him even the smallest chance of surviving. Meursault also thinks, “the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that’s wrong” (Camus 111). In this passage we see Meursault saying that the way that people are executed is inhumane because in some cases it makes the person actively wish for their own speedy death.

Camus does a good job of depicting the terror that someone who has been convicted to the death sentence has everyday and the description really does make the reader sympathize with Meursault. Overall, it makes sense to argue that one of the messages Camus is trying to communicate in The Stranger is a criticism of the death penalty.

Comments

  1. Nathalie SteinNovember 3, 2017 at 5:52 PM

    To be honest, I feel like saying The Stranger is merely about the death penalty is a bit of an oversimplification. In my opinion, it's more broadly a criticism of a society and legal system cannot tolerate any deviations from its perceived norm, and when it comes across a dissenter such as Meursault, it prescribes the harshest punishment available. While there is certainly a criticism of the death penalty implicit in that interpretation, it's not really the main focus of the novel, at least the way I read it- it's not the punishment itself that Camus is criticizing, it's the court's motivation for carrying it out.

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    Replies
    1. SolomiaNovember 13, 2017 at 12:08 PM

      Just because it isn’t the main focus of the novel doesn’t mean it is invalid though. I think The Stranger is definitely a criticism of the death penalty. Just think about how different the novel would be if the punishment was something like “life imprisonment”. A major part of the last part of the book is Meursault grappling with life and death and what that means, which wouldn’t have been a theme if the penalty had been lighter. I do agree with you that the book is a critique of the justice system as a whole, but the fact that Meursault is assigned the death penalty is definitely significant.

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  2. MitchellNovember 8, 2017 at 1:12 PM

    The main way that the novel seems to me to be "against" the death penalty comes in the form of Meursault's pointed defamiliarization of the mere fact that the state can determine the date and time of a person's death and kill them, in public, with complete sanction of the law. When he refers to the "bizarre language" stating that his head was to be removed in a public square in the name of the French people, the familiar legal and social structure of the courts and capital punishment is stripped of its legitimacy and made strange. We see state-sanctioned premeditated murder as a "punishment" for an "accidental" or at least unintentional murder, and the absurdity of this equation is apparent through Meursault's way of reporting the sentence.

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  3. AlbertNovember 13, 2017 at 7:26 PM

    I agree that Camus depicting Mersault as a despairing figure awaiting his impending death makes him largely sympathetic in his final moments. However, that's not the only aspect that makes Mersualt's plight sympathetic. The injustice of the trial (being convicted simply for being different), adds to this sympathy. The sympathy towards Mersault and the absurdity of the individuals running the legal system antagonizes this system as opposed to the specifically the death penalty. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Camus is criticizing the death penalty, but I think that this criticism follows from a broader commentary on the legal system.

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  4. DJNovember 14, 2017 at 8:57 AM

    Gloria, I 100% agree. I think it's pretty clear Camus' has an issue with the death penalty and the legal system as a whole. However, I also think Camus' deliberately used the death penalty as an over dramatization used to provide emphasis to the absurdity of the legal system. Not only would a lesser punishment not "fit" the story, but it wouldn't create nearly as strong a response from the reader. Therefore, I don't think we as readers can conclude anything about his specific thoughts about the death penalty. Rather, it is much easier to see the broader claims Camus provides us.

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  5. Jessica ValeteNovember 14, 2017 at 10:20 AM

    I agree! I think that Camus is definitely against the death penalty. I see why other people are against this because there are multiple messages in the story (as with most) but I certainly think that this is one is valid. The way he depicts the execution shows how his distaste for that form of capital punishment.

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  6. UnknownNovember 15, 2017 at 10:23 AM

    I definitely saw the Stranger as more a critique of the court than of Meursault's weirdness. The point you make about Meursault agonizing over his death day is valid, and I also thought Camus may have left out the Arab to draw our attention to the skewed way that the court looked at his case to begin with.

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